Bobsled amusement ride



Jan. 26, 1965 Original Filed May 16, 1960 K. W. BACON ETAL BOB-SLED AMUSEMENT RIDE 2 Sheets-Sheet l Enema QMOIQGQ/V INVENTORS BY// 8 M, m; Maw z; 27%

AT TORNEYS Jan. 26, 1-965 w. BACON ETAL 3,167,024

BOBSLED AMUSEMENT RIDE Original Filed May 16, 1960 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 INVENTORS KFPEL. WBACQN .EDGDE 0. Maze/41v ATTORNEYS United States Patent ()fiFice 3,157,924 Patented Jan. 26, 1965 3,167,024 7 EQBSLED AMUSEMENT RIDE Karl W. Bacon, Mountain View, and Edgar 0. Morgan, Palo Alto, Calif., assignors to Walt Disney Productions, Burbank, Calif., a corporation of California Original application May 16, 195i Ser. No. 2?,366, new Patent No. 3,114,332, dated Dec. 17, 1963. Divided and this application Jan. 25, 1963, Ser. No. 254,557

1 Claim. (Cl. Hid-63) This is a division of our US. patent application Serial No. 29,366, filed May 16, 1960, now Patent No. 3,114,332, issued December 17, 1963.

The present invention relates generally to amusement rides and more particularly to a ride of this type which simulates a bobsled descending an icy slope.

An object of our invention is to provide an amusement ride which realistically simulates a ride on a bobsled. For this purpose we have provided a ride in which individual cars coast down a banked sinuous track at a high rate of speed. The cars are adapted to seat the passengers in tandem, as on a bobsled, and the cars have wheels which simulate the sound of a bobsled sliding on ice or snow.

Another object of the invention is to provide a bobsled ride which will carry passengers at high speeds with absolute safety over a path that includes very sharp and highly banked curves, such as are found in a bobsled course.

It is a particular object of the present invention to provide a ride of the aforedescribed nature wherein the car wheels have peripheral surfaces of a material deformable into conformity with the track rails in proportion to the load carried by the car to thereby inhibit any tendencies of the cars to run faster when carrying a heavy load than when carrying a lighter load.

These and other objects and advantages of our invention will be apparent from the following description when taken in conjunction with the annexed drawings in which:

FIGURE 1 is a perspective and somewhat schematic view of our bobsled amusement ride;

FIGURE 2 is an elevational view taken longitudinally of a section of the track;

FIGURE 3 is a perspective view of a chassis for supporting one of the individual cars of the bobsled ride;

FIGURE 4 is a partial elevational view, partly in section of a chain drive means; and

FIGURE 5 is a transverse sectional View taken on the line 5-5 of FIGURE 3 and showing details of construction of the front truck for the car.

The general arrangement of the bobsled ride is best seen in FIGURE -1. It includes a continuous banked track, designated generally as 20, that is supported on the framework for a replica of a mountain or a hillside, such as Mount Matterhorn, and indicated generally by the numeral 21. The replica 21 has an opening 22, substantially at ground elevation, through which the track initially enters into the hollow mountain. After this initial entrance one of a plurality of individual cars 23 is pulled up an ascending section 24 of the track 20 by an endless drive chain.

After a car 23 reaches the apex of the mountain 21 it is released to coast down the track 20. The descending section of the track is divided into blocks, which are not designated, and each block contains a governor means 25 and a brake means 26.} The track 20 may pass in and out of the mountain 21 through several entrances and exits. As a car 23 descends the track 29, it passes over the several governor means 25 which regulate its speed to a predetermined rate for that particular section of track. It is to be appreciated that the speed of the car 23 will vary from time to time due to variations in the slope and curvature of various sections of the track 20, but the governor means 25 are preferably located with respect to a particular section of track so that all of the governor means 25 may be run at the same rate of speed. This arrangement is adapted to keep the speed of each car at a desired rate to avoid any possibility of one car over-running another. The details of construction and operation of the governor means 25 and brake means 26 are fully disclosed in our aforementioned Patent No. 3,114,332.

Each section of the track 28 is provided with a brake means 26 for halting a car in a section of the track preceding a subsequent section in which another car 23 may have become stalled. For clarity, the track 20 has not been represented as divided into specific sections and the number of brake means 26 shown does not correspond to the number of governor means 25 illustrated. It will be appreciated that the number and relation of governor means 25 and brake means 26 will be dependent upon the particular configuration of track 20 which is adopted.

A car 23 ultimately exits through anotheropening 27 in the mountain replica 21 and then passes through a body of water 28. The speed of the car is thereby greatly reduced upon leaving this body of water and the car is finally halted by a brake means 26 located in the passenger unloading area.

More specifically, each of the cars 23 has a body 30, which may be molded from fiberglas or a plastic or otherwise constructed. One or more passenger compartments 31 are provided in the body 3t In practice, each of the compartments is adapted to seat a plurality of passengers in tandem, thus duplicating the seating arrange ment of a bobsled. For safety, the car body 30 has side walls which hold the passengers within the compartments 51 but the body can be given a configuration otherwise suggestive of a bobsled. To reduce the shock when a pair of the cars 23 collide, fore and end sections of the body 30 are provided with padded sections 32, of a resiliently deformable material. This padding inhibits damage to the framework of the car bodies when they collide, as they often do, during movements in the passenger unloading and loading areas. Obviously, the padded ends 3 2 also greatly reduce the danger of injury to the occupants of the cars in the event that one does overtake another.

Each car 23 is mounted on a chassis 34 such as is shown in FIGURE 3. This is a view of the chassis as it appears support for the car body 39. A cross arm 56 is afiixed t in its central portion to the top of the beam 35 near the front end of the beam and another cross arm 37 is similarly afiixed to the rear end portion of the beam. The underside of the body 30 is afiixed to the cross arms 36 and 3'7 by a suitable fastening means. It will be noted that the upper face of the beam 35 slopes rearwardly and downwardly from the extreme front end of the beam until it reaches the front cross arm 36, whereby a forwardly facing shoulder 38 is defined on the beam. The underside of the car body Si is formed with a complementary indexing configuration, or may have a complementary member attached thereto for seating against this shoulder 38.

The track 3% comprises a pair of tubular rails 40, preferably of circular cross-sectional configuration. These rails are anchored to the ground, or to the framework for the mountain replica 21 as aforesaid, by standards (not shown) which engage the horizontally outwardly facing sides of the rails 44). These rails are thus unobstructed on their horizontally inner faces and top faces to provide guiding surfaces for the wheel supports of the cars 23. The lower surfaces of the rails 40 are also unobstructed to provide surfaces against which safety devices secured to the cars 23 can abut to prevent the car from being thrown upwardly off the track 20.

In order to closely simulate a bobsled ride the track has some tight, highly banked curves. Accordingly, in the curves the pair of rails 40 are not in a common horizontal plane. As a matter of fact, within the length of the wheel base of a car 23 the slope defined across the pair of rails 40 at a position corresponding to the location of the front wheel support of a car 23 may be substantially different than the slope across the pair of rails at a position corresponding to the location of the rear wheel support for the car. Therefore, if the under surface of the car body were mounted in such a way that the front and rear portions assumed varying slopes in accordance with the different slopes across the track 20, severe torsional stresses would be imposed on the body 30. In order to avoid this we have devised a front truck as embly 42 and a rear truck assembly 43 which together enable a car 23 to negotiate these sharp, highly banked curves without torsionally stressing the body 30.

The front truck 42 is shown in FEGURE 4. The front and rear trucks are substantially similar but while the front truck 42 is mounted for pivoting only on a vertical axis, the rear truck 43 is mounted for movement on both vertical and horizontal axes, the horizontal axis extending longitudinally of the center line of the beam 35. The rear truck 43 can thus assume a slope different from the slope of the front truck 42.

Referring to FIGURE 5, the front truck 42 is pivotally mounted on a vertical spindle 45. At about its rnidportion this spindle is integrally formed with a collar 46 which has a thrust seat on the upper face of the chassis beam Beneath this collar the spindle has a journal section 47 passing through an opening in the upper face of the chassis beam 35 and seated in a plain bearing 48 of a bearing box that is aflixed within the chassis beam in the forward section thereof. A threaded lower end ,of the spindle 45 protrudes downwardly beneath the bearing 48 to receive a take-up nut 49 which bears against the lower end of the bearing box to keep the collar 46 in snug bearing engagement with the upper face of the chassis beam 35. The front truck 4-2 is thus secured to the chassis 35 for pivotal movement only about a vertical axis.

Both front and rear trucks include an axle member comprising a substantially rectangular box beam having a central and vertically disposed housing 61 for receiving the upper end of the spindle 45 or 51, as the case may be. This housing seats a pair of axially spaced-apart tapered roller bearing supports 62 and 63 for the upper end of the spindle. Each of these spindles has a threaded upper end protruding upwardly beyond the upper tapered roller bearing 62, to receive a suitable fastening nut 64 and a washer thereunder. In order to protect the pivotal mounting, a suitable cap 65 is fastened on the upper end or" the housing 61.

At each end the axle member 60 supports a vertically disposed Wheel 67 and a tandem pair of guide wheels 68.

V The pair of wheels 67 have rolling contact with the upper faces of the pair of tracks 40 to support the car 23 and the tandem pairs of guide wheels 68 contact the inward faces of the tracks for steering the car by pivoting the truck around its vertical axis.

Each wheel 67 comprises a hub 69, a rim '70 and a tire 71. A pair of axle stubs '72 extends substantially coaxially from opposite ends of the axle member 60 and the stubs seat a pair of roller bearings 73, 74 for mounting the wheels 67, which are held in place by suitable fastening means 75. For mounting the guide wheels 68 in tandem, a member 77 is affixed to each end of the axle member as, on the lower face of the axle member and extending longitudinally of the chassis 34. Equally spaced from the axle member 60 the member 77, on the opposite ends mounts a pair of vertically disposed sleeves 78 for the reception of stub axles 79. The lower ends of the pair of axles 79 support the guide wheels 68, which are of substantially the same internal construction as the wheels 67.

The tires '71 are preferably made of urethane rubber or other similar material combining high load capacity with resiliency. The peripheral surfaces of these tires are normally cylindrical but deform concavely to conform to the rails 40, the degree of deformation being proportional to the load. Thus, heavier passenger loads increase the tire deformation and drag, tending to inhibit any tendency of heavily loaded cars to run faster than lightly loaded cars. In addition, the drag of the deformed tires produces a sliding sort of sound, like a bobsled. It should be noted that the use of rails 40 of circular crosssection enable the wheels 67 and 68 to easily follow the convolutions of the banked track 20.

It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various changes may be made in the amusement ride apparatus herein-above described by the substitution of suitable equivalents. However, it should be understood that we do not wish to be limited to the specific form of apparatus disclosed but only by the spirit and scope of the appended claim.

Vile claim:

In a bobsled amusement ride, the combination comprising:

a banked track having a pair of rails of circular crosssectionalconfiguration and including a descending portion;

and a car that descends said track rapidly under the influence of gravity, said car having first wheel means that rotate about a horizontal axis and ride upon the upper portion of said track and second wheel means that rotate about a vertical axis of rotation that engage the inner surfaces of said track, said first Wheel means having normally cylindrical peripheral surfaces of a material deformablc concavely into conformity with said rails in proportion to the load imposed on said first wheel means by said car to thereby inhibit any tendency of said car to run faster when carrying a heavy load than when carrying a lighter load.

References Cited by the Examiner UNITED STATES PATENTS 879,615 2/08 Enochs 104-86 X 906,732 12/08 McDonagh et al. 104-56 1,602,066 10/26 Burton 104-247 X 1,634,341 7/27 Romine 104-242 1,748,309 2/30 Rose. 1,922,738 8/33 Kelley. 2,016,828 10/35 Brownyer. 2,181,377 11/39 Mable 238-6 2,481,421 9/49 Hayes 104-216 2,539,360 1/51 Bartlett 104-63 2,567,438 9/51 McBride 104-55 2,902,072 9/59 Router. 3,114,332 12/63 Bacon et al. 104-63 LEO QUACKENBUSH, Primary Examiner. ARTHUR L. LA POINT, Examiner. 

